Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @08:44AM
from the didn't-know-yahoo-was-still-even-in-business dept.

Matthew Skala writes "The BBC reports that Yahoo! has rejected a shareholder proposal to adopt an anti-censorship policy, as well as one to set up a human rights committee to review the impact of Yahoo!'s operations in places like China. The interesting proposals are numbers 6 and 7 in the proxy statement available through EDGAR. This news comes on the heels of jailed Chinese reporter Shi Tao, suing Yahoo! for its involvement in his conviction, and Google's rejection of a similar proposal. The anti-censorship proposal was submitted by the same groups (several New York City pension funds) as the Google proposal. The proxy statement also includes the Board's recommendations — "strongly oppose[ing]" both proposals — with explanations of their reasoning."

Board of Directors Statement and Recommendation AGAINST Stockholder ProposalYahoo! shares the proponent's commitment to human rights, and as described in more detail in the board's statement in opposition to proposal no. 6 in this proxy statement, the Company's management team has already instituted practices and initiatives that are designed to assess the implications of the Company's activities and policies and to protect and advance essential freedoms, such as freedom of expression and privacy rights.

As an active flickr participant I can testify that Yahoo is very willingt o engage in Censorship on behalf of any country if it's bottom line is threatened by not censoring. And no it doesn't have to be that way Zoomr for example has a clear and unabiguious anti censorship principle and I'd move there in a second if I didn't have hundreds of photos with over 10,000 views, didn't admin 3 groups one with over a thousand members and over 10,000 photos, sigh. Fuck censorship!

I guarantee that such a move by Yahoo would decimate googles usage by Americans.

It might work, yes. Unfortunately China currently has a population of 1.3 Billion against Americas population of 0.3 billion.

So if you gain every single american who ditches google, but lose every single resident of China you are still at least 1 billion down. The reason that all companies are so keen to jump into bed with China is that they have such a huge population and yet the standard of living is rising at a scary rate.

China will have search capability. And unless China's government allows uncensored internet access, China won't have uncensored internet access.I didn't refer to either company because they're only marginally relevant. If they aren't there, someone else will fill the gap, search engines are plentiful. One may be more convenient than others, but most of them are "good enough" at getting results a user can use. Let's say all the existing search engines choose to boycott China.

China has Baidu, which is home-grown. It's already better than Yahoo and Google, from what Chinese people tell me. The American companies are trying to force themselves into a market where they're really not needed, and the only success they're having is where first-mover advantage builds a network, such as IM.

China's proposal for anti-censorship against Google's said proposal is to propose a censorship proposal proposition. In response the proposal set by China, Google proposed to set a an anti-proposal toward Yahoo's proposal to create a proposal against the China anti-censorship proposal. These proposals were proposed as a proposition to anti-proposialism, not censorship.

At the risk of getting modded off-topic (or maybe informative *coughcough*), "overrated" applies to the score of a comment, not the moderations done to it - that is, the rating rather than the ratings.

You know, a lot of over/underrated abuse could be removed by only allowing over/underrated mods to be applied after others, and only to count towards a fraction of the total. For example:

Someone posting with a karma bonus starts at 2. Overrated moderations should not be allowed to take them below 3, and underrated should not be able to take them over 1. If they are on 0, or -1, then an underrated moderation will negate one down-mod. If they are on 4 or 5, then a an overrated mod will negate one up-mod.

Here's what I don't understand, if Yahoo! stops complying with local laws, as these shareholders suggest, wouldn't it be purely and simply out of business in China? Could any company violate the Chinese laws and keep working in China, thus providing Chinese citizens a breach in the Great Firewall?

Because that's where it doesn't make sense to me, but maybe my analyse is a bit over-simplistic, if Yahoo! tries not to apply censorship laws, then it won't be able to operate in China and thus it wouldn't be any good for either Yahoo! or Chinese web-surfers, right? Or did I get something wrong?

Indeed, you got it exactly right. Yahoo's board further said that they think they have more leverage and actually promote free speech if they stay engaged, rather than taking their ball and going home.

They're shareholders. Why should they concern themselves with anything other than the company's profit? I know this sounds harsh and cynical, but this is the simple truth behind the public company concept. Whatever lofty reasons they might give for their decision, the real reason is that losing business in China would mean losing profits.

Because shareholders are human beings with thoughts, ideals and hopefully some conscience. The very idea that shareholders ONLY care about the end-result profitability of a company is and always has been a ridiculous assertion.

The proposal has been made and the board of directors have recommended voting against it proposal brought about by other shareholders. So it is the directors who are placing profit above human rights and not the shareholders at large. The very idea that the shareholders at large are responsible is ridiculous. The people responsible for the decisions made are far fewer and less obscure than you are trying to indicate.

The proposal has been made and the board of directors have recommended voting against it proposal brought about by other shareholders. So it is the directors who are placing profit above human rights and not the shareholders at large. The very idea that the shareholders at large are responsible is ridiculous. The people responsible for the decisions made are far fewer and less obscure than you are trying to indicate.

It's not ridiculous at all. The directors have only recommended that the shareholders vote against the proposal. It's still up to the shareholders themselves to vote to make the final decision. The shareholders are ultimately responsible, not the board.

That said, boards of directors traditionally have a lot of sway in how the shareholders vote. Many companies are owned largely by various mutual funds and not by individual people, and the shares owned by the funds are voted for them by the fund manager. And fund managers almost always vote the way the board of directors recommend, meaning this might be the kiss of death for the proposal.

The shareholders do have another option, though. They can divest themselves from a stock they consider morally repugnant. This was done with modest success back in the 1980s to companies who did business with apartheid Africa; But mutual funds have grown much larger since then, and a sell-off by concerned individuals would probably have little effect on Yahoo!s stock price.

There are also mutual funds that pledge to invest in only socially responsible companies (can't think of their names right now, but they're pretty easy to find.) If they own any Yahoo! stock today, their fund managers would probably vote their shares for the proposal, and if it failed to pass they would probably divest themselves.

I'd bet that not a single board member is so poor that he couldn't take the risk of getting fired over being anti-censorship and look for another job. If they do decide to instead direct the company without a sense of morals they don't do it because they are forced. There is nobody who could apply any pressure to them beyond - "oh I can't by another Porsche this year". So if they do suggest a policy like that they do it based on their own free wil

I'm not trying to absolve the board of blame. I am saying though that the blame is also owned by the individual shareholders, and not just the board.

The thing that got me when Google entered the Chinese market was their idea that "we can't effect change in China if we're not inside China." So they compromised their morals in order to provide the Chinese people with a Tienanmen-free search engine, and tried to do something controversial like tagging the results with "These results have been censored by th

Because shareholders are human beings with thoughts, ideals and hopefully some conscience. The very idea that shareholders ONLY care about the end-result profitability of a company is and always has been a ridiculous assertion.

It's also possible that the shareholders recognize that people like me will boycott Yahoo! over this issue and that's bad for profits. The ethicality is sometimes about which issues you chose to make a stink about.

I have to disagree with your stance that a company can or should knowingly support activities that are contrary to public morals even if it's legal by the standards of another country.By your logic, it's perfectly okay to support another country's activity in the exploitation of children in pornography, prostitution or labor if it happens to be legal in that country. Does the argument change when the issue is more focused? I'm not saying China is good with the exploitation of children, I'm just trying to

You're confusing your logic. The unintelligent, non-human "company" is the only force that moves without reason nor care of consequences towards profit. The individual shareholders are indeed capable of using their wealth and power to further whatever goals, charities, or purposes they want.Why is it that most people on here (and indeed, lots of places) go out of their way to justify just not giving a damn about other people? If we want to be selfish and care not for others, then just do it openly. The

It's difficult to see how one can promote free speech by helping to imprision anyone who says something the CCCP doesn't like. In fact, I'll go one step further: If you claim to be promoting free speech by engaging in censorship, you are a liar.

No, you got it exactly right. I'm surprised you haven't been modded down yet for it, though. Every time I say that, someone replies with 'Yahoo shouldn't help evil!' and 'if those people didn't want to be evil, they shouldn't work for a company that deals with evil countries!' and 'it's better to sacrifice yourself than someone else' even though it probably wasn't the employees IN China that even got to make the decision.Yahoo's in an impossible position. If they leave China, they've abandoned people. I

Yahoo's in an impossible position. If they leave China, they've abandoned people.

Really? I think Yahoo could use this newfangled Internet to set up a Chinese-language site outside of the Chinese government's jurisdiction. If the Chinese government chooses to cripple their own economy by cutting off it's workforce from modern tools, that's a choice they should have to make. We certainly don't need to be volunteering to come in and help them.

I believe you are correct: If they stopped censorship then they would not be allowed to operate in China. Which everyone agrees isn't good for yahoo monetarily. However, their presence is not exactly good for the Chinese people either because the company is opening the Chinese people up to what many in our world see as human rights violations by reporting them to the government.If I were a citizen I wouldn't want the company acting as government shills. And since I am a stockholder, I am going to act on my

Part of me wonders if there's a "breaking point" -- a point where Chinese officials will start loving money so much that they actually won't kick out a company that decides to take a stand against them.

Yeah, when you think about the problem some more, imagine that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft ceased any activity in China as the aforementioned shareholders suggested, maybe at some point the Chinese government would feel forced to bend their rules for these companies to come back in order to not become technologically retarded.

Or maybe more alternatives to these sites (iirc the #1 search engine in China is a Chinese search engine which obviously complies with the laws) could develop and ultimately Google, Ya

maybe at some point the Chinese government would feel forced to bend their rules for these companies to come back in order to not become technologically retarded.

The only reason Microsoft deals with China at all is to try to stem the tide of piracy. If Microsoft gave China the finger, China would respond in kind. Factories across China would start spitting out pirated copies of every Microsoft application in every language, giving them away and flooding the world markets with free copies of Office, ju

They certainly do not care about their people, but they undoubtfully care about their economy, and most notably, its tremendous growth. My point about technological retardation was that to have an underdeveloped Internet in a country could directly harm the economy, and its growth. Just imagine a country cloned on the USA except far behind the original when it comes to Internet. See how much the IT industry participates to the economy of industrial countries (or whatever they're called now)? My point was, I

Part of me wonders if there's a "breaking point" -- a point where Chinese officials will start loving money so much that they actually won't kick out a company that decides to take a stand against them.

I don't think that will happen. I think the problem lies in that while many Chinese politicians like money, they also like raw power. Power can come from having money, yes, but power also comes from other sources, such as title, role, authority, family relations, etc. The trouble is that if Internet/Web-based

You're confused. There is no rule of law in China. It's whatever the random party official says it is at that particular moment. Noncompliance with a party official can result in any number of things, which is exactly why Yahoo doesn't do it. They are moral and ethical cowards. If people can seriously debate whether a censored web search is worth sending people to the gulag (Chinese equivalent: Laogai) then our society is far more fucked up than I thought it was.

Well, yes and no. It seems easy to say they'd be gone, but of course they wouldn't really. Yahoo.com is not going anywhere, and Yahoo is perfectly capable of setting up a Chinese version of their site outside of China's borders.

If Yahoo and Google both simply made Chinese sites they'd be putting the burden on Chinese officials to censor them, rather than volunteering to do it themselves. The net effect might be exactly the same as it is today -- af

Very insightful alas this discussion is weeks old and I have no mod points but you deserve a +5 for saying what no one else had the nerve to say that corporate greed is actively enabling communist censorship here. Double plus bad.:(

It's a valid point. But one of the ideas in the proposal was to only comply with governments as mandated by law. Some of these human rights incidents seem to involve companies either censoring or informing on citizens in response to an unofficial request. This seems to leave human rights activists with no traction, since every government on the planet has employees who could make an unofficial request.If Yahoo/Google insisted on a formal (though secret) order before censoring/wiretapping, would this get

Here's what I don't understand, if Yahoo! stops complying with local laws, as these shareholders suggest, wouldn't it be purely and simply out of business in China?...

...if Yahoo! tries not to apply censorship laws, then it won't be able to operate in China and thus it wouldn't be any good for either Yahoo! or Chinese web-surfers, right?

Here's what I don't understand: why doesn't Yahoo just shut down the few specific services in China (e-mail, Yahoo Groups) that can result in pro-democracy critics being tortured in jail. Doesn't Yahoo have about a zillion other services that, while censored, will not force them to give up political dissidents to the torturers?

I buy locally products which are environmentally responsible and produced by local, non-monopolistic businesses whenever I get a chance. The trouble is, there are not enough of those to cover even a modest lifestyle. This is like saying that Chinese citizens who use search engines that censor results are voluntarily supporting their government's policy - true perhaps, but beyond ability of most people to stop. I would love mandatory labels such as "supports communism", "supports terrorists" and "made with c

This is proof that communist power > capitalist power. Simply for the fact that US corporations always have to yield to money. The moment money can't fix a problem, they are stuck. Will google and yahoo be able to ever bribe the communist party enough? I doubt it. I feel bad for the Chinese citizens who are censored in the middle of all this.

Well, I disagree with you there... because if it wasn't for the power of capitalism, American companies like Google and Yahoo! wouldn't exist, or wouldn't be strong enough, to even be over in China competing with Chinese companies. How many Chinese companies do you see in the US? Those that there are, are operating on a capitalist system.... another power of the capitalist system - you can't export communism (not using the cold war "export democracy" definition here, but rather that to be communist, your

Foreign concerns have been doing business w/China for thousands of years, bud. Barriers down? Which ones...please tell me. England was here for hundreds of years - gold and silver came in by the ton and rice on English frigates...spices and porcelain want out the same wa

Will google and yahoo be able to ever bribe the communist party enough?

No — especially since our particular brand of Capitalism makes all bribery illegal — including that of foreign governments [wikipedia.org].

Corporations are good at and are judged on making money. Aiding human rights is nowhere in the picture. Until the lawmakers pass some kind of FCPA-2.0 — which would outlaw cooperation with oppressing regimes the same way FCPA outlaws bribery — no corporation will shoot itself in the stomac

When I was at both Weyerhaeuser and Honeywell, I had to sit through week-long corporate orientations for new employees. In both companies, it was explained that sometimes, a "gift" or "token contribution" is a widely accepted practice in some cultures and therefore part of doing business in such cultures. (i.e. it's OK - it's not _really_ bribery)So no, the FCPA is practically on-paper only. Corporations obviously thumb their collective noses at it if they plainly justify it in their orientation PowerPoint

So no, the FCPA is practically on-paper only. Corporations obviously thumb their collective noses at it if they plainly justify it in their orientation PowerPoint slides.

It is all in comparision... Other Western countries don't have an FCPA-like law even on paper. And no, it is not an "on-paper only" law — there were and are prosecutions under the act. Here [steptoe.com] are some lawyers describing themselves as experts on defending against such prosecutions, for example...

It's not the censorship that troubles the people of China. It's the bill sent to your family, to pay for the bullet used to execute you. It's the forced abortions. It's the two years of torture in a disease-ridden prison camp without the benefit of an opportunity to face your accuser in an imparital court. It's the removal of your land and livelihood, without compensation. It's the gloating faces of the limosine riders who poison your water.

I agree with every other point you made. But I don't see what allowing China to overpopulate to the point they can't feed themselves and collapse into plague that rapidly spreads from China to every other part of the world would accomplish.

I'd like to hear your opinion again after you've had your child ripped out of your belly, and been forcibly sterilized. Or perhaps after this happened to your wife or sister. Mutilation and murder are not a form of population control. They are a form of mutilation and murder.

I'd like to hear your opinion again after you've had your child ripped out of your belly, and been forcibly sterilized. Or perhaps after this happened to your wife or sister. Mutilation and murder are not a form of population control. They are a form of mutilation and murder.

Given that it is not actually clear that abortion is murder, perhaps you'd care to stick your rhetoric someplace warm, stinky, and dark.

I think that people who can't control their reproductive systems should be forcibly sterilized.

You are beneath most animals, in that most animals would not do such things as you endorse to others of their kind.

You are an ignorant nimrod making statements you don't understand.

When rabbits overpopulate, they have a certain tendency to chew off the genitals of their rivals. When rats overpopulate they can do the same thing, but usually just kill each other. We are animals like any other and you don't know one fucking thing about being an animal. Obviously.

Yahoo! is deeply concerned by efforts of some governments to restrict communication and control access to information. Yahoo! also firmly believes the continued presence and engagement of companies like Yahoo! in these markets is a powerful force in promoting openness and reform.

Translation: Yahoo will give a brief second's thought to the plight of the common person in China before diving back into their Money Bin, Scrooge McDuck style.

Let's face it, these rejections are driven by China. No, the government of China is not leaning on Google, Yahoo!, et. al., but is making it quite clear that the continued right to operate in China via Chinese web connections requires some... alterations. And because China is seen as such a lucrative market given its population size, non of these companies is willing to put itself in a position to be banned by the Chinese, ceding dominance of the market to its competitors.

I'll be most impressed if one of them decides to stand up and say "enough is enough". The fact is, the population of China is large, but they only comprise 1.3 billion of the 6+ billion people on the planet. A significant fraction, but not enough to justify turning their back on principle.

> "The fact is, the population of China is large, but they only comprise 1.3 billion> of the 6+ billion people on the planet. A significant fraction, but not enough to> justify turning their back on principle."

Considering they are already competing for another fraction, and that the remaining fraction is mostly devoid of Internet access, I'd say China is pretty important to them.

I also posit that you haven't really imagined how many people are 1.3 billion.

Yahoo! is going to conduct business in as many countries as it can, and to do so, it is going to comply with such laws as that country has. No other major company does any differently... just as Google didn't. To think that a company should say "no we're not going to participate in this MASSIVE market because we don't like the [moral] limits they place on us, which don't impact our financials at all," is silly. We should just let in house Chinese search engines take over that market? I think not. I'd

I love that justification. Yahoo points at Google, Google points at Microsoft and Microsoft points at Yahoo. Each of them use the other to justify their actions, when in reality the cause is their own greed.

To think that a company should say "no we're not going to participate in this MASSIVE market because we don't like the [moral] limits they place on us, which don't impact our financials at all," is silly.

Well call me silly, because I believe should do the right thing over the legal thing.

So what if there was a law saying that a company working in China must have its Board of Directors each rape a child every year. That would be ok right because they are complying with the laws of that country?

Sorry not ridiculous at all. The GP's point was if its law it must be done and yahoo is using that as its defense. Well what if in the future China makes some laws which either directly or indirectly kill people (oh wait they have some of those already). The company can either A) say well it's the law nothing we can do or B) say we value life over money and walk away. Since Yahoo has said money > anything else then any far out there analogy is fair game.

I would love to see Y!, Google, etc be able to operate in China/etc with no restrictions. That's the ideal. But that's not the real world. In the real world, there's laws. You rely on those laws in the US or EU to restrict the use of your private data, for example. In China, they have a law that restricts the use of other information. Do I like it? No. But I'd rather we have our companies there, which have a vested interest in as little information restriction as possible, then just have a Chinese s

Is it just me, or is this the clear limitation of "markets"? Markets are great for things like pushing down cost, creating diversity of products (through competition), and distributing wealth (if not manipulated).

But when it comes to profit vs. principle, it seems to hit a wall. Is this the reason markets can't stop human trafficing and a gov't has to step in. Any of you collije edumacated E-conomists want to correct me here?

But when it comes to profit vs. principle, it seems to hit a wall. Is this the reason markets can't stop human trafficing and a gov't has to step in. Any of you collije edumacated E-conomists want to correct me here?

I'm not an economist, but this is why you can't have laissez faire capitalism to begin with. Letting the market take over human rights is precisely where the government should step in. To me if you are a multi-national corporation that operates and sells goods in the US, you should have to follow certain standards. Outsourcing should meet human rights standards, and any dealings in other companies should have to be held up to a standard. If given the choice between morality and money the corporation will always pick money as has been shown time and time again, the idea is that it's the government that has to force the corporation's hand in doing the "right thing."

Someone said it before and I'm probably misquoting them, but it comes down to I don't give a shit what the CEO of Ford thinks about emissions or his record on environmentalism, just like I don't give a shit what the CEO of Yahoo! thinks about human rights. I'm sure that some of these people are great people with great intentions, but regulation of the environment and human rights should be the government's job, because these things don't have pricetags, and the "free market" can't solve these problems. We shouldn't be expected to accept moral "handouts" from CEOs who decide that they will no longer do the wrong thing, we should be able to tell them to do the right thing, or quit doing business with us, without dollars and cents being the measurement.

Oh, I agree! What I was countering was the view that the market "can fix anything". Many of those who hold that view rant how government interference with the market is BAD(tm) and unrestrained markets are almost holy. Markets are tools, and can be used for positive or negative effects. Markets, being complex systems, can actually do both at the same time. At which point it's about perspective. Poor Guatamalan farm worker can't affort food after working 3000* hrs a week, while we get good, cheap banan

What I was countering was the view that the market "can fix anything"?

What those people mean is markets are like water, and will seek their own level, if left unrestrained. The problem is most people are myopic, and don't have the stomach for what this can mean in the short term.

Poor Guatamalan farm worker can't affort food after working 3000* hrs a week, while we get good, cheap bananas.

Most of the 'poor farmers' are lucky to have any jobs at all, and that's not the fault of free markets, it's the fault of

Ah, but the original point I was making is that the immoral parts are not always equal to the inefficient parts. Slavery in the US was rather efficient for the cotton industry, or so it seemed to them at the time. They had zero market incentive to give that up, and it require extra-market forces to ensure that they did.

Your water analogy is apt. Water doesn't only seek it's own level, it seeks the lowest level.

Slavery in the US was rather efficient for the cotton industry, or so it seemed to them at the time. They had zero market incentive to give that up, and it require extra-market forces to ensure that they did.

Yes, that is how slavery ended in America, is that the only way slavery could have ended?

Or if we didn't go to war, and the distastefulness of slavery continued to foment in the North, could the North have said, we're no longer buying cotton-based goods from the South, if they're made with cotton from s

God forbid anyone try to control those desires, then the free marketeers scream about regulation.

Who gets to decide the morality of the item being bought and sold? There is the problem with interfering in a free market. Perfect example is prohibition in the United States. People WANT alcohol. The government tried to legislate morality, they interfered with the free market, and screwed it up. Same thing is happening now with the War on Drugs. It goes on forever.

So, if consumers want something that is deemed immoral (sex slaves), or business owners (shareholders) want more profit, the market, by itself, is totally unable (or unwilling) to stop it. Government and extra-market forces (activists, watchdog groups, tree hugging hippies) are required to put controls on how that market operates in order to stop unwanted activity (slavery, monopoly) and promote it's better effects.

Most shareholders of large companies are institutional investors (e.g., mutual and hedge funds, banks, etc.) or executives/board members of the company. Any proposal that creates additional controversy or additional work for the company will generally be voted down by these shareholders, which explains why the anti-censorship proposal got only 15% voting in favor and the human rights committee proposal only got 4%.Yes, I realize that censorship isn't a very controversial topic to you or me, but it is from

See your business pages for examples. We no longer liberate people, we liberate markets. It's why the threat to oil in Iraq is met with guns and why almost 20 years after Tiananmen so many companies are moving into China. Lip service outrage is paid to things like harvesting Falun Gong prisoners organ because the market is safe for Wal-Mart and McDicks. Ditto that immolation of women is ignored in India (when they marry outside their caste etc) because it is a good market that can be moved into by companies

Indeed, I can't see how this can change, until a contrary incentive is provided. For example, were company boards subject to attrition to assassination, I think the picture would change very, very rapidly indeed.

The shareholder proposal is worded in a much more straightforward way than the Board's response... no surprise there. The response, which is trying to convince other shareholders not to vote for the proposal, is chock full of weasel words that never promise to do anything, only to try to do it. As in "Oh well, we tried, better luck next time... *shrug*". However, the Board says a few things pretty clearly if you dig through the document. Here's some choice quotes:

I for one am fed up with this company. I've been holding some YHOO since '97 (should have sold it all back in '00). If this company refuses to provide us with any significant gains, refuses to listen to shareholders, and continues to sell-out human rights for market share in China, I will be all too pleased to see it purged from my portfolio.

I would really love to sell these shares for a penny each, if only to tank the stock as hard as possible. I know this is a pipe dream, but I'm angry, and I feel betr

By setting up a business in a country that commits human rights violations, and then participating in them (e.g. turning over the names of dissidents when you know how political prisoners are treated), surely you can't just use the excuse that you are complying with local laws.

We can't really expect individual companies to adopt these proposals. If these proposals have any real teeth, then they could cost the company money, and then the company will lose against competitors that don't adopt expensive do-gooder policies. Occasionally, such policies will be very high profile and the cost of the policy will be offset by the positive PR, but that is rare.If it is really important for a company to do, or stop doing something, then perhaps the government should regulate it? I know t

A lot of nasty things have happened in the United States in the last 7 years. But guess what. Ya know all that bullshit the criminals in the Bush administration try to hide? They get found out. And there's a huge debate about it. And now their house of cards is starting to implode.

What the bastards running the Bush administration have to try and do in secret to protect themselves from the law, countries like Iran and China do openly. You think the SS will be mean if you make a stupid crack about assassin